Staff Writers
AUSTIN — The Texas House voted overwhelmingly Thursday to ban Democrats from holding powerful committee chairmanships, answering years of mounting pressure from leadership and grassroots conservatives to chip away at the minority party’s power in the Capitol.
The new House rules also reserved all vice-chair positions on legislative committees for Democrats — a sticking point with some conservatives but a clear concession to the minority party, which for the first time in modern history will not be part of the speaker’s leadership team.
“We were elected with 150 people representing the state of Texas,” said Rep. Todd Hunter, R-Corpus Christi, who helped write the new rules. “So our role is: Let’s get something done, and let’s not forget that we’ve got the main issues that we got to tackle.”
Some Democrats lamented the loss of power. Even so, most voted for the rules, glad for the opportunity to continue influencing the path of legislation.
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“The people of Texas should be really proud of the Democrats that stood strong and have a lot to bring home today because of the positions and the powers that were gained through vice-chairmanships,” said Rep. Ramon Romero Jr., D-Fort Worth. “They’re not chairmanships, but we have a great role to play and we’re ready to play it.”
The vote on the rules governing the House for the rest of the legislative session is typically a brisk battle over sensitive issues, and Thursday’s debate was teed up for fights over whether Democrats should lead committees, which bills should be given priority, and the proper protocol for bucking the authority of the powerful speaker’s office.
Instead, more than two-thirds of the House, including those from both parties, turned the tables and halted debate after less than an hour of discussion — then overwhelmingly passed the new rules on a 116-23 vote.
At stake in the fight were the levers of power in a chamber that recently emerged from a bruising intraparty clash to determine who would lead the GOP-dominated House.
The marquee issue was whether the speaker would be allowed to appoint members of the minority party, the Democrats, as committee chairs — with the attendant power to kill legislation without a floor vote and decide which bills have the potential to pass.
Those bills include priorities critical to Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, particularly a school choice program he has tried to get through the Texas House for years. Democrats and rural Republicans have successfully fended off voucher-style bills for decades. Abbott used millions in donations to knock most of his GOP opponents out of office during last year’s Republican primaries.
Thursday’s showdown was the first floor test of new House Speaker Dustin Burrows’ ability to lead a sharply divided chamber, with its 62 Democrats and 88 Republicans. A majority of his fellow Republicans opposed Burrows as speaker, but the Lubbock Republican’s GOP supporters helped him win the vote for speaker with the backing of a majority of House Democrats.
Burrows’ critics during his speaker’s race against state Rep. David Cook, R-Mansfield, said his bipartisan support and stated willingness to work across the aisle to help Democrats represent their districts will hurt the House’s ability to pass conservative legislation.
On Thursday, bipartisanship provided his path to victory. Again.
One of the major sticking points in the rules resolution by Hunter, who chairs the powerful State Affairs Committee, was a ban on Republicans serving as committee vice-chairs. A section of the resolution prohibits the speaker from filling those second-in-command positions with members of the party holding the House majority. For the past several decades, speakers have appointed members of the minority party as vice-chairs.
The rules also established 11 new subcommittees, which can be led by Democrats under the approved rules.
For some GOP activists, it was still too much.
“All Burrows had to do was let the Texas House vote on whether Democrats could be chairman,” Luke Macias, a conservative podcaster and longtime Texas activist, wrote on X.com. “Instead he filed a rules package at 4 a.m. that gives his GOP members a way to say ‘I voted to ban Democrat chairs’ while giving Democrats a lot of new power.”
The Republican Party of Texas last year made the ban on Democratic chairs part of its platform, telling its members in the Capitol that supporting anything less would signal disloyalty to their voters.
Earlier this week, state party Chairman Abraham George called on lawmakers to enshrine the ban in their rules, saying it’s “past time we end this practice.”
“Texans elected a strong Republican majority in the Texas House because they pledged to deliver on its promises of limited government, security borders, and fiscal responsibility,” George said in a statement
During Thursday’s debate, Hunter defended his proposal, saying bipartisan work has been a House tradition for veterans like himself.
“I don’t think that it does anything more than encourage [the parties] to work together, and it doesn’t take the chairman’s power,” said Hunter, who was first elected in 1989.
Rep. Harold Dutton, D-Houston, said when he joined the House in 1985, Democrats were in the majority and at least two Republicans were committee chairs.
At the time, Democrats wondered if they should ban Republican chairs, Dutton told Hunter.
“The answer was that it’s because this is Texas, not Washington, D.C.,” Dutton said, referring to partisan gridlock in the nation’s Capitol. “This represents a sea change in what this body has been. … Is it the end of something, or the beginning of something, do you think?”
Rep. Jared Patterson, R-Frisco, a staunch Burrows supporter, gathered enough signatures from both sides of the aisle to push through a motion shutting down an anticipated onslaught of amendments and other efforts to remove Democrats from the vice-chair roles.
The matter had been debated for years, Patterson argued.
“Not only a majority from each political party, but a majority of the members, members who came together, agreed to work toward a solution,” Patterson said. “We’re not here to play games today. We’re here to get to work.”
Rep. Mike Schofield, R-Katy, who opposed Burrows as speaker, opposed cutting off debate before a final vote.
“If you do it to us, we’ll do it to you,” he warned on the floor.
Schofield voted for the rules but later told The Dallas Morning News that if the vote was an indication, those who opposed Burrows were in for a tough time.
“It seems very much like the leadership is saying we don’t intend to hear from anybody, and we don’t intend to allow you to participate, and we are going to shut you down and just have quick votes on things,” Schofield said. “They have basically told me this is how it’s going to be this session. So why would I not use the tool that they just decided to use?”
The proposed rules package also instituted other changes that could affect the flow of legislation. It cut seven committees and created three new ones — on government efficiency; trade, workforce and economic development; and intergovernmental affairs.
The House is set next week to consider a separate “housekeeping” resolution by House Administration Chair Charlie Geren, R-Fort Worth. The resolution, which can be subject to floor amendments, handles financial and budget matters in the House.
Lawmakers will debate whether to allow the speaker to appoint a Texas attorney to provide legal assistance to and representation for the House, whether to allow members to exempt employees from legislative salary caps, and whether to increase representatives’ legislative expense accounts.
Karen Brooks Harper has covered Texas politics in and out of Austin for nearly 30 years. She's also covered the cartel wars along the TX-MX border, Congress in Mexico City, and 6 hurricanes, among other stories. Raised on blues and great food in the MS Delta, she lives in ATX with her family, her guitar, and her boxing gloves. In that order.
Nolan covers Texas politics. Before relocating to Austin in June 2024, he spent nearly a decade in Washington, D.C., reporting on national politics, including the White House, Congress and presidential campaigns. He is a graduate of Florida A&M University.
